Guard Wolf (Shifter Agents Book 2)

by Lauren Esker

  "Hey," Avery said, looking up from where he'd flopped lazily with a blanket half covering him. "Can you teach me another thing in—okay, I know better than to say 'in Chinese'. I know there are different Chinese languages. What was the one you taught me those words in? I know there are Mandarin and Cantonese—what else is there?"

  Nicole laughed; punch-drunk on exhaustion and relief and post-coital bliss, she couldn't help it. "How many languages are in Europe? China is much bigger. My family's language is Hokkien. It's also spoken in—or, well, I should say a similar dialect is spoken in Taiwan. Tim's family speaks Cantonese, but I only know a few words of that. What did you want to know?"

  He blushed and glanced down. "I want to know how to say 'I love you'."

  She pronounced it for him carefully. He looked up, into her eyes, and just as carefully, he said "I love you" with the most incomprehensible accent she had ever heard in her life. She would never have known what it was supposed to be if he hadn't already told her.

  "Is that right?" he asked anxiously.

  "That is so far from right that it's maybe somewhere on the horizons of Mars." She kissed his nose. "But it's also incredibly sweet. As sweet as it is pointless. I'm Australian, you dunce. We speak English there."

  "Well, I know that." He was too relaxed to be even mildly nettled. "I don't know, I was just thinking—of making it special somehow. Not just blurting it out over empty takeout cartons."

  "You can blurt it at me anytime." She was tired enough that it had taken this long for the awareness to sink in, that he'd actually said those words, to her. Avery loves me. "I never thought I'd feel like this. Not so quickly."

  "Maybe when it's right, you just know." His voice was quiet and serious.

  "Maybe. Avery ..." She had to gather her nerve to say it out loud, three words that couldn't be taken back. "I love you. I really do. I love you more than anything, and I just want ..." Her words failed; her voice broke. Instead, as he sat up on the couch, she met him halfway, kissing him fiercely.

  It started as a clash of teeth and tongue, but softened to gentle caresses, a light stroke of her tongue between his parted lips, kissing and nibbling until they were both breathless. When their lips finally parted, Avery cupped her face in his hands and simply gazed at her, as if he wanted to drink her in with his eyes.

  "You are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen," he whispered. "I think I could look at you forever and never get tired of it. Never see everything. I can't believe you want me, broken parts and all."

  "Your broken parts only make me love you more." She touched his face lightly, fingers skipping over the bruises to rest against his skin. "I can't believe you look at me and see beauty. That you like me just the way I am."

  "Don't change a thing." He nibbled lightly at her lips and kissed her nose, and then gave her an impish grin. "Well ... maybe one thing."

  "Dare I ask?"

  "Are you sure you wouldn't be more comfortable on the bed?"

  "Are you ready to go again?" she asked.

  "Even if I'm not, I can think of a variety of ways we could kill time until then."

  Nicole rose and let the blanket fall away. Wearing nothing but a smile, she took him by the hand and helped him to his feet.

  He fell against her, with kisses and murmurs and hands gentle on her clean body. Commanding, almost: he herded her into the bedroom like, she couldn't help thinking, a sheepdog steering his flock. She'd enjoyed taking over in the shower, but now she just wanted to be held and cherished; she wanted to lie back and let him make her happy, in whatever way pleased him. She trusted him implicitly for that.

  The covers were still rucked halfway off the bed. Nicole gave a sudden laugh as she realized the last time they'd been on that bed was the first time they'd made love. The sheets were still dimpled from their bodies.

  "I hope that's good giggling," Avery said as he laid her back on the bed.

  "The best."

  "Mmmm." He nuzzled her neck, trailed kisses down to her breasts. His tongue flicked over each of her nipples in turn, light touches that made her hips jerk.

  Their earlier lovemaking in the shower had been frenzied, both of them driven onward by the needs of their bodies. But for this, there was no urgency, no rush. Avery licked and teased her nipples until she was gasping, then continued his gentle course downward; he kissed her the curve of her belly, and paused briefly to press his cheek against her skin.

  "I wanted to do this earlier," he murmured, "but it's easier on the bed."

  He parted her legs with a gentle hand, sending a delicious shiver of anticipation through her. But still, he teased, kissing her inner thighs, running his hand down to her knee and back up again. He took a brief detour downward to kiss the tops of her feet and stroke his tongue across the hollow of her ankles.

  "Even your feet are beautiful."

  "Feet which may kick you in the head if you don't stop teasing and give me some action."

  Avery grinned up at her, a quick flash of teeth. "What's that? Did you say you wanted me to stop?"

  "You're terrible," she said, knowing he heard what she meant: the exact opposite.

  He kissed and teased his way back up her legs, and now curled himself between her thighs as if he meant to stay awhile. The first flick of his tongue into her folds made her back arch. With unerring instinct he found exactly the right points, reading in her small jerks and gasps when she wanted him to back off and when she yearned for the warm laving of his tongue over her clit.

  He teased lightly at her entrance with tongue and fingers. The first finger that slid into her wet heat almost made her come right there, but as her body began to rise he stopped, letting her slip back from the edge, then slid it in ever so slightly farther—teasing and teasing, keeping her close to the edge, but never quite allowing her to plunge over it.

  "Avery," she gasped. She'd never ridden the edge for this long. Her whole body tingled. With every touch, she thought she was going to go over, but he read the cues and kept pulling back. He tamed and harnessed the fire rising in her, until she could hardly breath. His fingers moved in her, the slightest movement sending sparks exploding behind her eyes. She was so close. And yet he kept her there, though now it was only the lightest touch of the tip of his tongue, the most careful movements against her hot inner walls.

  "Avery," she cried again, shaking. Her hands clenched on the sheets.

  She felt it coming in the tensing of his body, the mounting of his anticipation before he dived, burying his fingers deep in her and his tongue in the folds he'd so carefully drawn to the edge of her climax. And she came with a force she'd never known, bucking her body and crying out as she writhed in wave after shivering wave.

  After, she felt weak and wrung out. As she trembled in the aftermath, he kissed his way carefully back up her body. "Wow," was all she could manage.

  Avery was grinning with unabashed bliss. "I love doing that."

  "I love you doing that," she gasped.

  "Want to take a break?" he asked softly.

  "Are you kidding?"

  She started to sit up, but he already had reached for the nightstand drawer with the condoms. Nicole collapsed back, her body humming with pleasure and anticipation.

  She was already wet and ready when he slid into her, every nerve ending still zinging from the force of her orgasm. His first movements drew a deep and throbbing satisfaction from her, a vibrato of satisfaction rolling like a bell's tolling through the chambers of her body. Then her pleasure began to mount again, rising in waves with each powerful stroke deep into her. Avery drew up his left leg, resting his weight on the knee with his bad leg stretched out behind, and drove them both onward, stroke by stroke. She seemed to be floating, her nerves chiming with the sensations racing through her. She thrust back against him, moving together in rhythm, and feeling him jerk with the first surge of his climax was what pushed her over, too, a slow deep orgasm that rolled outward from her center. She clung to him, shuddering, and they rode
out the surges together, until falling back to the bed at last.

  Their breathing calmed slowly as they both relaxed into comfortable lassitude. He slipped out of her and rolled over onto his good side.

  "So, that was a nice dessert," Nicole murmured.

  "You mean it wasn't the main course?"

  She was trying to work through the pleasant fog in her brain for a snappy comeback when Casey's phone rang in the living room.

  "Don't answer it," Nicole mumbled.

  "Have to. It might be something about the kids, or the case."

  He peeled himself reluctantly off her, rolled off the used condom, and limped out to the living room. The ringing had stopped by the time he got there. Nicole lay where he'd left her, lazy and contented, but raised her head at the sound of a bark of laughter from the living room.

  "What is it?"

  Avery came back with the phone. Wordlessly, he turned it and showed her the screen. There was a text from Jack, a single word: HELP.

  "Do you think there's something actually wrong?"

  "No, I think he's just being a dick, but let's find out." He lay back down, and with Nicole pillowing her head on his arm, he typed out a text: Is anyone bleeding or dead?

  Jack's answer came back immediately: You mean besides US?

  Avery's chest moved under her ear with a soft laugh. Suck it up man. You did Afghanistan.

  Afghanistan has got nothing on four toddlers, Jack's reply came back.

  "Poor Jack and Casey," Nicole said without a trace of sympathy. "Should we offer to rescue them?"

  "Hell no. They offered." Avery tossed the phone onto the nightstand. "And right now, I'm not moving for anything."

  "Except to the closet, maybe?"

  She said it without condemnation, just pitching out an idea.

  "Yes," he admitted. "But later. I think I'm too tired to shift right now, and we won't both fit as humans."

  "I think we're going to need to find a place with a bigger closet."

  There was a little while in which they both drifted near sleep, and then: "I think," he said in a sleepy, contemplative way, "that you're absolutely right."

  Epilogue

  The road was as rough as Avery remembered, the trailer as run-down. The only visible difference was that the year had sunk deeper into autumn, the grass a little browner, the garden harvested and tucked in for winter. The goat was tied in a new place.

  The last time, he'd been driving his familiar and much-missed Prius. This time, the car was Nicole's small sedan, with Nicole at the wheel. She parked behind Chester's truck, where the grass was still slightly crushed from the Prius's tires.

  Avery stepped out of the car and stood for a moment, scenting the wind. It was cool and damp and smelled of the coming winter. There were few smells here of man-made things; the sedan's hot engine was the strongest one. The trailers and abandoned cars and all of the other junk had weathered until their petroleum-and-metal smells were no longer too strong to compete with the forest around him. The acrid tang of woodsmoke hung in the air.

  Given different circumstances and a different life, he might still live somewhere like this. He might not have gone to school at all; some of the traditional wolf packs kept their children off the government radar, never registering birth certificates or getting them social security numbers. He hadn't had either until he was seized by CPS at age seven, and he still had no idea what his true birthdate was. They'd guessed at his age and assigned him the day he was taken as his birthday. He had never wanted to celebrate it.

  But that wasn't his life, hadn't been his life in so long he could no longer relate to it. Whatever he'd once been, he was an urban werewolf now, and his pack—his strange, mismatched pack—was urban as well. While the wolf part of him found this wild solitude compelling, he was also looking forward to getting back to central heating, indoor plumbing, and Netflix.

  He turned as Nicole got out of the car, wrapped in a heavy jacket. She seemed to feel the cold more than he did; maybe it was the wolf in him, or maybe the fact that she'd grown up in a warmer climate. It was November now, the seasons wheeling slowly into winter.

  "Ready?" she asked quietly.

  He wasn't, but he didn't think he would ever be. "Are they still asleep?"

  Nicole nodded. The children, currently puppy-shifted, had slept in the backseat of the car during the entire drive out to Chester's, lulled by the motion of the car. Between them, Nicole and Avery had devised a simple puppy restraint system that used a cargo net hooked to the seat belts. It was awkward and funny-looking, but with blankets folded under them for bedding the puppies didn't seem to mind, and it also contained them if they shifted human—although there were two carseats in the trunk, the most Nicole had been able to scrounge from her workplace, just in case.

  Between the two of them, they gathered up the fat, drowsy, furry bodies. It seemed to Avery, as he cradled Ginger and Gael against his chest, that the children had grown noticeably in the short time they'd been in his and Nicole's keeping.

  And they would grow more ... but he wouldn't be around for it.

  It didn't hurt, he told himself. It shouldn't hurt. There was nothing at all wrong with the children; however demented their origins, they were four healthy and normal kids, whether in their wolf or human shapes. They deserved a chance to grow up with their family.

  He and Nicole carried the children up the path to Chester's sagging porch. The old man appeared around the end of the trailer, having heard the car. He had a hunting rifle in his hands, but the muzzle dropped to point at the ground as soon as he recognized them. Then his face changed from welcome to bafflement when he saw what they carried.

  "What's this?" he asked, looking from Avery to Nicole, seeing the same solemnity in both their faces.

  "It's what's left of your pack, sir," Avery said quietly. "May we come in, please?"

  Shortly they were drinking more of Chester's terrible coffee, while the freshly energized puppies played happily in a hastily de-weaponized part of the clutter. Avery and Nicole took turns telling the old man, as gently as possible, about the fate of his children. They tried to gloss over the worst of it, but Avery had a feeling that Chester's fertile imagination was more than capable of filling those parts in. He had, after all, been right all along, in the generalities if not the particulars.

  "We don't know their names," Avery said, running his hand down Ginger's soft, rounded back as she wrestled playfully with his shoe. "What names their parents may have given them, I mean. The records in the lab only record them as numbers." Another small horror, piled on top of so many. "Nicole and I gave them names—temporarily, you understand, so we had something to call them. They're not quite old enough to completely understand, though, so you can give them different names if you want."

  He looked helplessly at Nicole, and she reached out in silence and took his hand. The English language could, in cold bare words, describe anything, but there were no words appropriate for the magnitude of what had been done to Chester's family. And yet, there was no way to undo it, and the living legacy of it existed only in these children, who had done nothing wrong, except to exist.

  "No," Chester said softly. He raised his rheumy eyes from the puppies to the two of them. "Look at me, both of you. Look at this place. You think this is a good place to raise four kids? You think I can do it, with no one to help out?"

  "You can get help," Nicole countered. "You aren't alone, Mr. Penstock. There are agencies for this sort of thing. I can hook you up with available resources in your area."

  "Chester," Avery said, drawing the old man's watery gaze to him. "They're your kids. Your family. Your pack. I know what that's like. I know where they should be."

  "Yeah," Chester said. He drew a shuddering breath, and looked pointedly at Hunter, the smallest, who had nosed his way into Nicole's lap and curled up there. "So do I."

  Avery and Nicole exchanged a look of bleak shock. "Mr. Penstock, they're young, and they've been terribly uprooted," Nico
le said. "They don't know who any of us are yet. I've helped place children in their grandparents' homes, and worked with the families, and seen the children blossom and thrive. I know you've had a lot dumped on you today—"

  She stopped when Chester held up a hand. "Miss Yates, I get where you're comin' from. I know these kids are my flesh and blood, and for all I ain't met 'em before today, I can love 'em. I can. I do." His gaze dropped to Gael and Sophie, wrestling in one of the few cleared spaces on the cluttered floor, then drifted to the piles of machine parts and old newspapers around them, the piled ashtrays on every surface ... the guns, heaped in hastily relocation on the upper shelves of his overflowing bookcases. "But flesh and blood ain't all. I know what that sounds like, coming from one of us. I know." His eyes lifted and found Avery's, piercing and intent. "Blood and pack is everything to us. It makes us do terrible things, sometimes. Like raising kids when we got no business raising 'em, just because we think we got the right."

  Avery squeezed Nicole's hand to forestall the objection he could sense rising on her lips. "What do you suggest, sir?" he asked quietly.

  "I say these kids need to go to someone who'll do right by 'em, and that someone ain't an old man who's turning seventy-five next month and has a list of health problems as long as your arm. I'll put my John Hancock on the paperwork today, if you make me one promise."

  "Name it," Avery whispered, sinking his hand into Ginger's warm fur as she clambered into his lap.

  "That you'll bring 'em to visit. That they'll know their grandpa, and where they come from."

  ***

  They ended up taking the kids into the backyard to tire them out—or at least into what passed for a backyard: the span of tall frost-killed grasses between the two trailers. The puppies were cautious at first, but increasingly thrilled to explore their new outdoor world, after a lifetime of concrete and cages.

  "You realize you've actually signed yourself up for a paperwork nightmare, Mr. Penstock," Nicole explained cheerfully, standing in waist-deep dead weeds with Hunter napping in her arms while his siblings played tag around her feet. "It's not simply going to be a matter of putting your signature on a single piece of paper. For a start, these kids don't even have birth certificates yet. All of that is going to need to be done. Avery and I—are you even listening, Avery—"